Avinash Pasricha’s life behind the lens
The Hindu
An ongoing exhibition of Avinash Pasricha’s works features some striking portraits of dancers and musicians
The celebrated Avinash Pasricha is showcasing some rare photographs from his enviable collection of two generations of musicians and dancers at the Museo Camera Centre in Gurugram. The exhibition is on till November 22. With one of the finest collections in the country, Avinash is a familiar figure at cultural events in Delhi, and shoots even today, if only on his cell phone.
The black and white photographs in the show range from artistes in concert to intimate family shots (the one of Kumar Gandharva with his tanpura at home is particularly evocative). He has also made audio visual films on various artistes, including Begum Akhtar, Madhavi Mudgal and Kumar Gandharva.
Walking me through the retrospective, the affable photographer says, “I began taking pictures of artistes at Sapru House during the Vishnu Digambar Jayanti music festival in 1966. Frankly, I had no ear for music then (even now my wife focusses on the music more than me) but the ability to capture emotions on film fascinated me. We used cameras with flash then; live stage photography was not really known in India . I was probably the first to start it. A new technique called acufine, which increases the speed of developing a film by three times, is what I used if there was sufficient light to capture the different moods of the musicians.”